New Voters - Not as Democratic as you might think

We've all heard how The New Soviet Man's electoral fraud machine has registered record numbers of first-time, young voters. We heard the same thing back in 2004 - there was going to be record numbers of first-time, young voters and they were going to vote en masse for John Kerry. Well, did they? Let's run the numbers, popular votes only:

2000 Presidential Election Stats:
Bush (R): 50,456,002 - 47.87%
Gore (D): 50,999,897 - 48.38%
Nader (G): 2,882,955 - 2.74%
Fringes: 1,066,246 - 1.01%
Total Electorate: 105,405,100

2004 Presidential Election Stats:
Bush (R): 62,040,610 - 50.74%, +11,584,608 from '00
Kerry (D): 59,028,444 - 48.28%, +8,028,547 from '00
Fringes: 1,198,499 - 0.98%, essentially unchanged from '00
Total Electorate: 122,267,553

The difference in the total size of the electorate between 2000 and 2004 is 16,862,453; that many more people voted in 2004 than 2000.

Now, let's assume that had Ralph Nader not run on the Green Party ticket in 2000, all 2,882,955 of his voters would have voted for the Democratic slate of Al Gore and Joe Liberman (unlikely, since some would have gone off to fringe candidates, but is probably pretty close to reality). As a percentage of the electorate, fringe candidates were essentially unchanged in percentage of votes, so we can discount them for figuring out how the electorate actually changed in the four years from 2000 to 2004.

When you account for Nader's 2000 votes going to Kerry in 2004 - and also assuming that everybody who voted for Bush voted for him again, and everybody who voted for Gore did so for Kerry (probably pretty close; any side-to-side shifts probably would cancel out) - this is what the net change, Republican vs. Democrat, for the 2004 election looked like:

Bush (R): +11,584,608 votes
Kerry (D): +5,145,592 votes

That totals to 16,730,200 more people who voted Republican or Democrat more than who voted Republican or Democrat (plus Green) in 2000. If you recall from above, the total change in the size of the electorate was 16,862,453 - essentially the same number as those who increased the vote totals of Republicans and Democrats. (The difference in "fringe" voting between the two years is identical to the 132,253 voter count differential between D+R in 00-04 vs. the electorate count in 00-04).

So, 16,730,200 more people voted for either George W. Bush or John Kerry in 2004 than voted for the corresponding tickets in 2000. Now, were all of those "new" voters? Considering that the total electorate size in 1992 was 104,423,923 (-981,177 vs. 2000, -17,843,630 vs. 2004) and just 96,277,634 in 1996 (-9,127,466 vs 2000, -25,989,919 vs. 2004), for the purposes of this excercise I think it's safe to say that the net effect is that all of the 16,730,200 new Democrat or Republican voters in 2004 did not vote in 2000, 1996, or 1992.

Now, if you've haven't been calculating this in your head, here's how this works out:

Percentage of "new" voters who voted for John Kerry in 2004: 30.76%
Percentage of "new" voters who voted for George Bush in 2004: 69.24%

In other words, "new" voters to the electorate voted for George W. Bush in 2004 by a 2.25-to-1 margin.

I think it's dangerous to assume that "new" voters are automatically liberals, regardless of who the candidate is. I'm sure that that type of electorate assumption is skewing some of the polls dramatically.

As Sean Hannity would say, "Let not your heart be troubled" - unless you're an Obama supporter, that is.

All of us Republicans and conservatives MUST get out and vote.

Eight days to go...